Mark Twain might be well-known for his witticisms, but he wasn’t joking when he said that the coldest winter he ever spent was a summer in San Francisco. While the rest of the country is melting, I have been shivering through city streets after sundown. But when the afternoons are confusingly warm and sunny, I still manage to stock up on summer produce; it’s just that a post-dinner dessert of berries with yogurt or ice cream no longer sounds very appealing when I need to bundle up in a blanket just to stay comfortable in my apartment.

After picking up some olallieberries at the farmers market on a deceptively beautiful day, I found myself looking for an easy dessert that would give me an excuse to use my oven and warm up the room that chilly evening. Having not tried olallieberries previously, I found this particular basketful quite tart. Being a bit too exhausted from the work day to fuss with them too much, I did what any reasonable person would have done: (more…)

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, and after 3 straight years of late November and early December law school exams putting a celebratory restraint on this national holiday of excessive cooking, drinking, and feasting, I’m making the most of it this year.

This weekend, I attended my second Friendsgiving dinner for the month and celebrated even more jubilantly thanks to receiving the very relieving news that I passed the California bar exam (little yay; BIG SIGH). And now, mere days before actual Turkey Day, I broke my usual week-of-Thanksgiving rule of not eating any remotely American food before the big day.

I have no defense. I’ve been sick, sitting in pajamas and slurping on soup and sipping up tea all day for six days straight. I needed a change. I needed some crunch. I needed to use up the rest of the 1-pound bag of pretzel sticks I’ve been munching on since last Wednesday. And, because I’ve been almost entirely without energy, I needed a super easy, slap-it-together, stick-it-in-the-oven-and-let-it-do-its-thing answer.

So after 5 minutes of prep and 12 minutes of lounging on the couch while it baked, my spoon dove through the crunchy, crumbly, cinnamony brown sugar and pretzel topping into a ramekin full of warm, gooey apples, and I forgot all about that silly little pre-Thanksgiving rule of mine. (more…)